The Haunters & The Haunted eBook

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: Delrio. See also Thorpe’s
Mythology, vol. iii. p. 274.]

L

THE BLOODY FOOTSTEP

Local Records

On the threshold of one of the doors of Smithills
Hall there is a bloody footstep impressed into the
door-step, and ruddy as if the bloody foot had just
trodden there; and it is averred that, on a certain
night of the year, and at a certain hour of the night,
if you go and look at the door-step you will see the
mark wet with fresh blood. Some have pretended
to say that this appearance of blood was but dew; but
can dew redden a cambric handkerchief? Will it
crimson the finger-tips when you touch it? And
that is what the bloody footstep will surely do when
the appointed night and hour come round....

It is needless to tell you all the strange stories
that have survived to this day about the old Hall,
and how it is believed that the master of it, owing
to his ancient science, has still a sort of residence
there and control of the place, and how in one of
the chambers there is still his antique table, and
his chair, and some rude old instruments and machinery,
and a book, and everything in readiness, just as if
he might still come back to finish some experiment....
One of the chief things to which the old lord applied
himself was to discover the means of prolonging his
own life, so that its duration should be indefinite,
if not infinite; and such was his science that he
was believed to have attained this magnificent and
awful purpose....

The object of the Lord of Smithills Hall was to take
a life from the course of Nature, and Nature did not
choose to be defrauded; so that, great as was the
power of this scientific man over her, she would not
consent that he should escape the necessity of dying
at his proper time, except upon condition of sacrificing
some other life for his; and this was to be done once
for every thirty years that he chose to live, thirty
years being the account of a generation of man; and
if in any way, in that time, this lord could be the
death of a human being, that satisfied the requisition,
and he might live on....

There was but one human being whom he cared for—­that
was a beautiful kinswoman, an orphan, whom his father
had brought up, and dying, left to his care....
He saw that she, if anyone, was to be the person whom
the sacrifice demanded, and that he might kill twenty
others without effect, but if he took the life of
this one it would make the charm strong and good....
He did slay this pure young girl; he took her into
the wood near the house, an old wood that is standing
yet, with some of its magnificent oaks, and there
he plunged a dagger into her heart....

He buried her in the wood, and returned to the house;
and, as it happened, he had set his right foot in
her blood, and his shoe was wet in it, and by some
miraculous fate it left a track all along the wood-path,
and into the house, and on the stone steps of the threshold,
and up into his chamber. The servants saw it the
next day, and wondered, and whispered, and missed
the fair young girl, and looked askance at their lord’s
right foot, and turned pale, all of them....